Adventures in Grandparenting

When my kids flew the coop…actually, when the first one went off the college, I decided to buy a FAKE Christmas tree. I thought it was a reasonable purchase. Real trees can be expensive AND the worst part is…they shed! The shedding is annoying. It doesn’t matter how fresh the tree is or how diligently you keep it in water, it just wants to drop spiky pine needles all over the floor. Buying an artificial tree and then reusing it year after year sounded very budget friendly and “green” to me. However, my teenage children (at the time) didn’t see it that way. You might as well have called Mrs. Grinch. My youngest son was especially distraught and I heard about this betrayal of Christmas for the next few years. They eventually got over it, declaring they would never, ever have a fake Christmas tree in their homes. Ever!

I have had this artificial tree for more than 10 years now. This proves my point about it being economical and green. But I evidently, for some strange reason, had never assembled it by myself. I had farmed that job out to whatever children were hanging out at the house at the time. Now that everyone is busy, it falls on me to get it up and decorated. The tree is actually a colored coded puzzle, with many pieces. Thankfully this year I knew what I was doing. Last year was a different story.

I put the tree up early this season, we were watching the grandkids on Black Friday and I wanted them to help decorate it. That part went fine. It wasn’t until the next evening when my husband and I were curled up on the couch, watching a movie that we heard the crash. My decade old, fake Christmas tree had taken a nose dive in the living room. Bummer. Nothing broke, expect the tree stand, luckily I had only let the grandkids put on non-breakable ornaments. But it was still a bummer.

I am hosting a big Christmas cookie decorated event in a few weeks so I needed (or felt like I needed) a Christmas tree . Otherwise, I probably would have waited until the after Christmas sales and looked for a new one. The next afternoon, while I was pondering this, my youngest son, the one who years ago thought I was the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, showed up at my house with a brand new, easy to assemble, artificial Christmas tree. I was shocked, surprised and touched. He had a big grin on his face, shrugged and then put it together for me. Long live my new, FAKE Christmas tree!

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1 Comment

We have had a fake Christmas tree for years, but it’s so flipping complicated to put up that I am unable to do it by myself. I hate that. I hate having to rely on my husband (who does it without complaint) to put up the tree. Each year I swear that I am going to buy an easy-to-put-up tree, but still haven’t. Merry Christmas!